Tomáš Koref

Joint PhD Candidate in Legal Theory at Faculties of Law at Charles University and Goethe University Frankfurt

Project Associate, Center for Critical Computational Studies (C3S), Goethe University Frankfurt

I am also affiliated at Center for Law and AI, Cornell Law School, as Non-Residential Fellow, and at Trustworthy Human Language Technologies (TrustHLT), Faculty of Computer Science, Ruhr University Bochum, as a Researcher.

About my research

I am a legal theorist working at the intersection of legal theory, computational social science, and AI. My research combines theoretical, empirical, and computational approaches to study how courts interpret and apply the law. My key focus is legal argumentation and judicial reasoning. See Research.

Scholarly workshops and seminar series

I believe research needs international community and thrives in exchange with others. I initiated and co-run four regular events in Legal Theory and AI&Law:

1) Argument Mining and Empirical Legal Research Workshop (AMELR) - workshop collocated with leading AI&Law conference ICAIL with leading researchers in the field, Chicago (1st 2025 edition: program, proceedings with our preface)

2) Jurisprudential Cocktails - informal jurisprudence discussions hosted in Prague,

3) AI&Law Seminar Series - platform for junior scholars to discuss ongoing research with an interdisciplinary audience, in Frankfurt and Bochum,

4) CYLT Workshop in Legal Theory - yearly international workshop for students and junior scholars in legal theory to discuss their mater's thesis or dissertations, in Brno (2024, 2025)

I am also the head of Czech Young Legal Theorists Associations (CYLT).

Feel free to join any of of these no matter your background, seniority or location!

Updates

07/2026: Became affiliated at Cornell's Center for Law and AI to further develop our work with amazing Jed Stiglitz and his team

07/2026: My first invited podcast is out (in Czech) - see here

06/2026: Paper How Continental Courts in Central Europe Interpret Statutes received best paper award at ESELS conference!

05/2026: Paper Mining Legal Argument to Study Judicial Formalism accepted for publication in Artificial Intelligence and Law Journal!

04/2026: My first interview about my research is out (in Czech) - see here, in print here, p. 42